It takes around 10 years to train to be a sushi chef. The first couple of years of which focus purely on the rice itself, let alone the fish. So maybe the subtitle for Rolling Hills: Make Sushi, Make Friends isn’t perhaps the quickest way to find some acquaintances.
But Rolling Hills has a trick up its sleeve; you’re a cute little robot who can automate his sushi recipes, leaving more time to forge friendships with the locals.
Your arrival in Rolling Hills is no coincidence. Brought in to rejuvenate this sleepy town, it isn’t long before you uncover a great mystery that has been kept secret for thousands of years. It’s nothing bad though, Rolling Hills is the latest cosy game to release on Xbox Game Pass.
As Sushibot, your arrival in Rolling Hills is contentious. The town mayor, and father of two of the main shopkeepers in the town, lies to you about the state of it. But you quickly learn that Rolling Hills is a peaceful and quaint place, so all can be forgiven.
Your main task is to open the sushi restaurant in town and feed the denizens daily. But, almost ironically, you aren’t really making the sushi yourself. Sushibot has access to a machine called Sushi-matic that churns out five unlocked dishes at a time. Your main responsibility is to then match up the type and quality of the dish to what the person has recommended.
There are three types of dishes: Hearty, Sweet and Fish (Fish being noticeably fewer in number of dishes than the other two) and quality that ranges from one to five. A customer will arrive, raise their hand and an icon will appear overhead with the type and quality required. Match this perfectly and gain a five-star rating from them, provided you do it within the time limit.
For the first few days of gameplay in Rolling Hills, this is pretty much all you can do. It starts off slow and isn’t until after a few days that you begin to unlock new things to do and the game opens up into something more.
Once this happens, you quickly find yourself getting into a bit of a rhythm that is fun, if a little bit too passive for what constitutes a cosy game. With your earnings from selling manufactured sushi, you can visit the market to buy ingredients to level up your dishes, visit the workshop to buy furniture which all come with their own passive abilities and visit the café to bond with the residents.
However, as mentioned before, you aren’t actually making the sushi directly. The ingredients you pick up only have an XP value associated with them that you select from a menu to upgrade your dishes. Similar too for the furniture you pick up. It is purely aesthetic with no interactions to be had with any of it, just passive abilities. These can increase the time your customers will wait, and grant additional XP or money when new customers walk through the door.
The most disappointing aspect though is in the interactions with the residents. Only a select few are considered main characters and whilst you can chat with everyone in Rolling Hills, it is only when inviting them for a coffee date through the proprietor of the coffee shop that you can increase your friendship level with them. There are no gifting mechanics or the odd errand to be run for them. With little actual interaction going on with them, it is difficult to feel any sort of affinity. Like the dishes themselves, these characters become simply a progress bar to level up.
When rolling around Rolling Hills, there are also a few daily activities to undertake. You can collect soda cans that have been left as litter, find the hidden present each day, go fishing, and more activities that appear less frequently. But even the fishing is done by someone else, you just need to find the randomised spot each day and then call them over. Much like the other activities, everything is just a bit too passive.
There are the odd other tasks to complete, and rumours of spirits that can be summoned in Rolling Hills, but these don’t require you to do much else outside of your daily activities to be successful. New characters also appear over time, looking to move into the town and bring with them new features. One in particular brings another robot with them that ‘helps’ you out in the restaurant, but invariably just blocks the door for people to get in and out of.
There is no denying that Rolling Hills: Make Sushi, Make Friends is what would be considered a cosy game. Its cutesy graphics and relaxing gameplay are definitely there, but the social aspect and even the customisation of the cooking is lacking. Everything is just a bit too passive really.
Some may enjoy that and just treat it as a game you can switch off to, but compare it to other cosy games and Rolling Hills comes up short.
